Booting From a ZFS Root File System on a SPARC Based
System

On a
SPARC based system with multiple ZFS BEs, you can boot from any BE by using
the luactivate command.

During the installation and Solaris Live Upgrade process, the ZFS root
file system is automatically designated with the bootfs property.

Multiple bootable datasets can exist within a pool. By default, the
bootable dataset entry in the /pool-name/boot/menu.lst file is identified by the pool's bootfs property.
However, a menu.lst entry can contain a bootfs command,
which specifies an alternate dataset in the pool. In this way, the menu.lst file can contain entries for multiple root file systems within
the pool.

When a system is installed with a ZFS root file system or migrated to
a ZFS root file system, an entry similar to the following is added to the menu.lst file:

title zfsnv109BE
bootfs mpool/ROOT/zfsnv109BE

When
a new BE is created, the menu.lst file is updated. Until
CR 6696226 is fixed, you must update the menu.lst file
manually after you activate the BE with the luactivate command.

When a new BE is created, the menu.lst file is
updated automatically.

On a SPARC based system, two new boot options are available:

After
the BE is activated, you can use the boot -L command
to display a list of bootable datasets within a ZFS pool. Then, you can select
one of the bootable datasets in the list. Detailed instructions for booting
that dataset are displayed. You can boot the selected dataset by following
the instructions.

Use the boot -Zdataset command
to boot a specific ZFS dataset.

Example 5–5 Booting From a Specific ZFS Boot Environment

If you have multiple ZFS BEs in a ZFS storage pool on your system's
boot device, you can use the luactivate command to specify
a default BE.

For example, the following ZFS BEs are available as described by the lustatus output: